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Friday, January 18, 2013

B. Black and Sons: Tailoring Destination

Well, I'm home safe and sound in Beacon! I had a fabulous time exploring L.A. One place I made sure to go was B. Black and Sons, a tailoring supply shop located in the heart of the L.A. garment district. I've ordered from their website before, which has a fine supply of hard-to-find tailoring accoutrements. But I wasn't prepared for their massive and truly amazing array of goods in their brick and mortar store.

First of all, the fabric selection was huge, spanning two floors. Here's a view from the upper balcony.

Being a tailoring supply house, it's no surprise that much of their fabric is suiting in business-like shades.

But there was also an amazing selection of bright colors, all appropriate for tailored garments.

I fell in love with some ice blue wool crepe and bought enough to make a pencil skirt.

Most of their inventory is wool, but they also have plenty of other choices like silk matka in every color of the rainbow, lovely linens and cottons, as well as synthetics.

Enticing as the fabric may be, the real wonder of this store is the selection of tailoring supplies. They have many esoteric items, like felt for undercollars, either pre-cut or by the yard.

Here are skeins of waxed thread, for basting and hand stitching.

You can also buy ready-tailored hair canvas for men's jacket fronts. How cool is that?

They also sell shoulder pads, interfacings, buttonhole twist and gimp, buttons, buckles . . . I could go on and on.

Long story short, don't miss this place if you're heading to Los Angeles. It's a tailoring nerd's dream come true!

wow! bookmarking the online shop. wish i would have found this site when i was making my winter coat a while back, they have all the stuff i had a hard time finding! i would looove to see it all in person.

I went to BB&S on the fabric trip... but it is about five blocks off the area where most of the other fabric stores are, and where our bus dropped us off. If my BFF hadn't had a GPS on her phone, and I hadn't roughly rememered the name, I would be wool-less!

I got sawdust from the woodcutting area from my local hardware store for free. They don't mind if you take some, just make sure the bag you haul it away in doesn't have any holes or else it will spill all over the place!

My homemade tailor's ham & sleeve roll turned out pretty well, even though it was one of my first projects!

Linda; I too had trouble finding sawdust for my tailor's ham, until I realised it's what they use as flooring in cages for small animals! So basically any petshop or wellsorted supermarket should carry it. Good luck!

This looks like a great destination for a summer road trip. I live in a tiny town in Oregon, but I bought a vintage teardrop trailer last fall. And the plan is to restore it and drag it around with my trusty wiener dog, Wilson. Looks like it could be a fun trip for this summer! Thanks for sharing.

Did you check out the skirt length table? Usually I can find a nice length enough to do a jacket for pennies. When I was at FIDM out penthouse workroom was 1/2 a block down and I used to hotfoot it to B Black and Sons on my lunch break.

The guys who work there are adorable. Go enough times and they'll start asking you when you are going to make them a suit.